OK, so we’ve already discussed what to do, and what not to do when putting a site together yourself. Maybe you’re thinking, “That’s Too Hard”, or maybe “I don’t have time to do all that”. Not to fear, I can help.

If you don’t have the time or the resources to create a site yourself, you’ll want to hire a web developer. Before you start, you’ll need to understand one very important thing. NOT ALL WEB DEVELOPERS ARE CREATED EQUAL. I know that was loud, I’m sorry I have a loud voice. I run into clients all of the time who didn’t get what they paid for, or as in the case of the old saying- they did get what they paid for (a lousy site).

When choosing a web developer/designer you’ll want to make sure he/she has the skill necessary to complete your project. The web has many different aspects to it, so make sure the developer has some experience under his/her belt. Make sure the experience is relevant to your project (you don’t want an ASPX coder creating your PHP/mySQL site) and that the experience is current. Web technologies change frequently, so make sure the person/firm you choose is up to date with their knowledge. Look at previous work to see if their style jives with yours, and also make sure they don’t suffer from the Mike Brady Syndrome (every site looks the same).

So you’ve made sure they have the skills, but you shouldn’t stop there. Ethics are very important (and unfortunately lacking in today’s age). Get references, and make sure you check them. Ask former clients if they were on time with the project. Ask them if they were happy with the work, and if they would hire the person/firm again.

Now that you’re at this point, you can start taking bids for your project. Take some time initially, and make sure you outline everything you want your site to accomplish. If budget is a concern, prioritize your wants and needs so you get the most important things included in the first round. Keep in mind when accepting bids that you do get what you pay for. If your average bid is around $2000, and you get one that’s $500- watch out. It may be tempting, but I can assure you from experience that the $2K bid is actually what you’ll need to spend to make it happen.

If you’d like to know more, or would like us to bid on your project, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do everything I can to help you get the site you’re looking for.

In Part 2 I discussed why using some HTML editors is a bad idea.  This time, I’ll discuss what you need to consider when creating your place in cyberspace (did I really just type that?).

I’ve been developing websites for a very long time. I’ve seen a lot of changes; audio and video being added to sites, adding the design of a site using an external file, addition of JavaScript (I told you I’ve been doing this a long time). In all this time two things have remained constant- content and navigation.

How you create your site will determine three things; how a visitor finds your site, how long a visitor stays on your site and whether or not someone will like your site enough to link to it.

Content
I’m sure you’ve heard the term “Content is King”. How true that phrase is. A lot of the “O” in SEO is re-writing content, or adding content to a site. If you don’t have any content on your site, then the search engines can’t figure out where you belong in the vastness of the ‘Net, and you won’t rank well.

Search engines are only one factor in the content game. If you have content that is either lacking, or not relevant then your visitors will not want to stay on your site, and they’ll hit the back button, and find a site that has what they are looking for (known as Bounce Rate).

Structure
Equally important is the structure of the site. The site’s structure consists of two things; navigation and page layout. Knowing a few things about typical browsing and viewing habits of people will help you decide what information to put where on the page.

Let’s start with your navigation. How you link your site together will determine how people browse your site. Your navigation should help guide them, but not restrict them. You want the visitor to be able to find what they are looking for easily, and without frustration. There are two links you should always have in your navigation- a link to the home page, and a contact link.

Let’s talk about the actual page structure. Search engines like content that is in book form. In other words your site should be structured using a combination of header tags (in descending order) and paragraphs that contain your relevant content. This will make it easy for the search engines to “read” your page and understand it’s contents, but it will also do the same for your human visitors as well. Really, humans and search engine bots aren’t that different.

Most importantly, you need to take the above advice, and also consider your target audience. For instance, if you have a site that is geared towards sight-impaired people, you would want to use contrasting colors (text vs. background) with larger than normal font sizes. If you have an ecommerce site, you’ll want to stick with a white/light background.

Now if this looks like too much work, or way to time consuming, then come back next time so I can give you some tips to look for when choosing a web developer.

In Part 1 of the series, I talked about how using a HTML editor is a bad idea. In this part, I’ll expand  more on why this is a bad idea, and let you in on some trade secrets.. well, not really but it’s some really good information.

HTML Editor Limitations
We run into clients all of the time that have used a web-based editor to create their site, usually provided by their hosting company. While you may think they are providing a great service, in reality they are costing you visitors, and even a high search engine position.

In the SEO world, we use certain HTML tags and Meta tags to tell the search engines certain information about your site, so they know better understand what your site is about. For instance, having the right title tag is very important. It helps tell the search engines what the page is about, which they use to decide how relevant your site is on a given topic.

The problem is that some editors, especially the web based ones, don’t let you control the title. The title you choose for one page, is really used site-wide, which is a no-no in Search Engine Marketing.

We’ve had problems with editors not using Header tags, using JavaScript for links (which search engines can’t read) and not allowing additional pages to be added to the site. These are just a few examples of things we have run into when optimizing clients’ sites that use this type of editor. I could tell you horror stories for hours on some of the things we’ve had to deal with, and some have even resulted into a complete rebuild and server move of a site.

Problems are not just limited to the web-based editors, but some of the software based programs cause some problems also, although not as severe. Some of the problems associated with software editors is proprietary code (Microsoft Front Page), code that only works in certain browsers and just plain badly formatted code (making your file size larger, which means slower load times).

If you have to use an editor, I would recommend Dreamweaver. While it’s code could be a bit cleaner, it’s not as bad as some, and the learning curve is pretty small.

Next time: Things to consider when building a website.

The Internet. What began as a United States Government mechanism to communicate during times of war or catastrophic event, has turned into a way for us to communicate, conduct business and even make purchases. These activities are usually done over a subset of the Internet we have come to know as the World Wide Web.

In the early days, the amount of people who knew how to create web sites was limited. Today, about 15 years since the WWW started to blossom, the amount of people who know how to create a web page has grown, but it is still limited.

“What?” You say? “I don’t believe that.” OK, let me explain.

The advent of HTML Editing programs (both software based, and hosted-web based) has given the misconception that anyone can create a web page. While technically that is true, how effective is that web site. Really, if you have Microsoft Word, or any variation, you can take a document and publish it to HTML, and post it on a server.

I should also point out that not all HTML is created equal. The code that most, if not all, of these programs (especially MS Word) is horrific. While the browsers can read the code, it may not display properly, and it may have a very slow load time due to extra & needless code that is used by these programs.

There are several factors that need to be considered when creating a web page, some are technical, some are from a marketing perspective and others are common sense. An HTML editor doesn’t consider these things, it just spits out HTML.

In the coming weeks, I’ll explore all of the considerations needed when creating a website, and I’ll even show you choose a web designer.